


Like Garden Weeds

by OrphanText



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Domestic, Emotional Constipation, M/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 01:50:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4858619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrphanText/pseuds/OrphanText
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The nature of weeds is that they grow where you do not want it to, but it does the same, nevertheless - rather like the rebelliousness of youth, but Bond thinks he is by far too old for that. </p><p>Bond is also wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Garden Weeds

**Author's Note:**

> Beta: ice_evanesco
> 
> I'm not quite sure what I meant when I said domestic. Many thanks to ice_evanesco and Sammy.
> 
> Created 1 March 2015. Ignored for half a year. Finally had enough courage in myself to finish it.
> 
> Finished 24 September 2015.
> 
> Author created summary: Bond deals with the question of CAN IT BE LOVE to the tune of I CAN'T BELIEVE IT IS NOT BUTTER and the likes.

_Mary Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?_

\---

He wakes at the same time Bill does, less to the quiet buzzing of his phone and more of the sudden absence of a warm body beside his. The sheets are warm against his skin where he has slept, but he finds the cold air rather rude and unwelcome, and tugs them back up, rolling over to watch Tanner ( _Tanner, because its always Tanner and never Bill when morning has come again_ ) picking through the strewn of clothes they had left trailing from the living room to his bedroom. A brief consultation with the clock by the bedside indicates that it was _too fucking early to be awake and about_ , and he pulls a pillow into his arms just as Tanner returns to the bedroom, naked as the day he was born with an armful of what he presumes is his crumpled suit before him. He must have looked petulant, for Tanner took one glance in his direction and then sighed, as though dealing with a particularly willful child.

“Go back to sleep, Bond,” he said, words quietly as to not disturb the ritualistic quiet of morning routines that they shared.

“You don’t have to be in the office till nine.”

Tanner hums his agreement, and bends down to pull on his pants, treating Bond to a rather lovely view of his posterior. Bond sighs through his nose, remembering how perfectly it fit into his hands, eyes not missing the marks he left on Tanner’s skin with his lips and teeth.

“I refuse to show up to work to stand before board members in the same suit I wore yesterday, just crumpled.” Tanner tugs the material up his legs, and pulls it over the lovely scenery Bond was ogling, drawing a quiet sound of disapproval from the other man. “It’s unprofessional.”

“You can afford another hour in bed. I’m lenient, I’m willing to settle for half instead of one.” Bond reaches out, running a hand up Tanner’s thigh, hoping to coax the other man back into bed with the familiarity of his touch.

“I need to head back to my flat for a change of clothes, a shower, and breakfast.” Tanner continues, as though Bond had never spoken at all. In the meantime, however, Bond has noticed a pale spot of skin in his pants where there was a hole worn into the soft cotton material, and has rudely poked a finger into it. He earns a slap to his wrist for his trouble, and retreats back into the swathe of blankets and pillows, pointedly not pouting, but it was a near thing. “Some of us has to set an example.”

“I’m wounded.”

He watches Tanner roll his eyes while shrugging on his shirt. There was something remarkably adorable about MI6’s chief of staff when he is buttoning his shirt with only his pants on, squinting at the mirror with his tongue between his teeth and normally neat hair tousled beyond any salvation. Tanner attacks his hair next with his fingers, but makes a displeased noise through his nose and gives up just as quickly to pull on his pants.

“I will see you in the office,” Tanner says, when he is more or less put back together, stuffing his tie into the bag which he slings over his shoulder. Bond only huffs at his ceiling, and it appears that is enough for Tanner, the front door shutting quietly behind his footsteps. Alone by himself, Bond tucks the pillow more securely into his arms, and tries to return to sleep.

He doesn’t.

\---

They keep it as professional as unprofessional can be. Tanner’s personal mobile hasn’t always been on speed dial on his own. It should alarm him, how easily he grew accustomed to having a permanent number on his ever changing own. Instead, he palms the thin slip of cold plastic, and sets it glass side down on a napkin on the table, careful not to jostle any of the plates off its surface. It is crowded enough as is, plates of food and beading glasses of water crammed onto a small round table. The back of the chair from the table behind knocks into his own, and he only nods in acceptance of their quickly uttered apology, his attention already caught on the figure hurrying in his direction, head bowed against the milling crowd.

“Wipe that grin off your face,” Tanner says when he reaches Bond, coat over his arm and cheeks puffing red from having fought his way through the tangle of human legs, a mess of tables and chairs with sticky out bits to catch his bag strap in. “It’s three in the afternoon. You’re not drunk. What do you want?”

“Do I have to be drunk to buy you lunch?” Bond asks instead, because it is not in him to answer any question directly. He chooses to let the waiter’s impeccable timing answer for him, Tanner beginning to frown as a plate of roast beef sandwich, soup, and salad joins them in their setting.

“You are making it very difficult for me to decline,” Tanner says when the waiter is out of earshot. He doesn’t seem to be looking to leave, however, though his hand is wrapped around the strap of his bag, so Bond leans back against his chair, knees knocking against Tanner’s beneath the table. “I could be abstaining from beef for all you know.”

“You could be,” Bond agrees, and counts it as a win when Tanner stops perching on the edge of the chair, letting go of the bag strap for long enough to touch a fingertip to the cutlery.

He knows what Tanner is thinking: it is Tanner’s off day, and Bond is not drunk as he had initially assumed at 3PM on a Saturday. Here, they do not have the post-mission adrenaline to blame, none of the let-me-get-you-dinner-as-an-excuse-to-fuck bullshit that Bond usually pulls. He is fully prepared for Tanner to decline, and just as he is about to foist the entire thing on a badly and just as hastily constructed story, Tanner picks up half of the sandwich, and bites into it.

The chatter of the people around them fills in the silence between them, and it is not an uncomfortable situation: Tanner eats, and Bond watches. There is something satisfactory about watching Tanner eat, the man occasionally breaking off little bits of bread to mop up the sauce from the roast beef on the plate. When he catches Tanner wiping crumbs off his lip with a finger and then sticking the digit into his mouth, his own goes dry, and he quickly busies himself with the croutons on the salad.

“You might as well tell me,” Tanner says. His expression is honest as he leans forward, and that, more than ever, turns the lock more securely on Bond’s own secret cache of insecurities and emotions and relationships. “What have you gotten into now? If you need help… “ he spreads his hands before him, palms upwards, shrugging minutely. “Its nothing to do with work, is it?” he adds a little more suspiciously towards the end.

“Contrary to popular belief, I don’t always have an ulterior motive for everything that I do.” Bond delicately spears a crisp leaf on his plate, and picks up a sliver of toasted pecan with the slight glaze of sauce clinging to the side of it, giving it more attention than was needed. “You are a workaholic, Bill.”

“Can you blame me?” Bill raises his brows at him, managing to fit incredulity and fond exasperation into the simple motion.

It seems to be the wrong thing to say, however. The conversation, whatever there was of it, peters off, and the chatter of the lunch crowd sketches in the space in between them. It could be the answer to both questions, of course, but Bond has enough self respect, and holds onto his silence.

“I am sorry.”

Tanner, patient, kind Tanner, and arguable the more giving out of the two of them, speaks first. There is a gentle crinkle to Bond’s forehead, but Tanner either does not notice, or has chosen to ignore it.

“I don’t blame you,” Bond allows, when the waitress has disappeared along with their empty plates. “You best be off. I am afraid that I have taken up far too much of your time, and you are already scarce on that.”

The legs of the chair scrape loudly against the ground as Bill gets to his feet, hand on the worn strap of his bookbag. He pauses, an awkward tension to his shoulders as he hovers there indecisively.

“Hardly a waste of my time if you have treated me to lunch, is it?” he says, rather stiltedly, unsure of the right thing to say in light of his blunder.

Bond crinkles a smile, which could have just been about anything when coming from the agent in question, and says nothing.

“If you,” Tanner stops, and licks at his lips in an almost uncharacteristic nervous gesture.

“It’s fine.” Bond does look up from his scrutiny of the table, sincerely. Tanner stays rooted where he is, before giving the back of the chair an awkward pat.

“I would not be entirely unamenable to a repeat, regardless of what is in your head,” he says quietly. A child’s nearby wailing nearly drowns out his words, but Bond catches it all the same. “Not that I read minds, but. Good day, Bond.”

He sits there, until Tanner has been swallowed up by the hoards of families and the dating couples that has been let out by the weekend, and signs for the bill. He knows what he meant, and here, beneath warm sunlight and in the cheerful crowd, he absolutely refuses to dissect into it.

His phone buzzes and he swipes at the screen absently as he signs the receipt with a pen.

_My treat, next time._

If there should be a next time. Bond doesn’t know.

When he is in Argentina a week later and he hears Tanner’s voice over the intercom, he tells himself he isn’t being a coward just because Tanner’s tried to call him last Wednesday evening during his after work hours.

He isn’t.

\---

“You worry him,” Q tells him when Tanner is gone. “And stop using me as your intermediary.”

“I’m a big boy, as you can see. Fully capable of taking care of myself.”

“Oh go cry to someone else, for God’s sake.”

\---

He knows that Tanner is fond of poetry. Love poetry, to be exact.

“Please do kindly stop rummaging through my desk,” Tanner says, from where he is standing at the door with a mug of tea in his hand.

Bond looks up, but does not remove his hand from where he’s stuck it amongst the books and papers Tanner’s got shoved away into his desk.

“My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense, as though of hemlock I have drunk,” Bond says, and is rewarded by the sight of Tanner flushing.

“If you’re just here to make fun of me,” Tanner says, tightly, and it makes Bond feel like he is five again, pulling the pigtails of some girl he likes.

“No, not at all.” Bond turns back to his exploration of the drawers, only to be firmly shouldered aside by Tanner. “You _write_.”

“I should throw you out of my office,” Tanner grouses, sliding the drawer shut away from Bond’s curious eyes.

“Do you also attend those poetry slam things?” Bond asks, out of genuine curiosity. It is just one more interesting fact about Tanner, one more thing that he didn’t know about Tanner but does now. There are many of those which he doesn’t know, and he wonders if he will.

“Out,” Tanner says flatly.

He goes, but for the rest of the day, he cannot help but think of Tanner, dressed like the day he had called him out for lunch, at a bar in the midst of teenagers and young adults, exchanging alcohol and words and heartfelt passion. Q catches him watching a youtube video of a slam, and he receives a judgemental look for it.

_Won’t you write something for me?_

Tanner doesn’t reply to his text, but he isn’t expecting one.

\---

If asked, perhaps it all starts in Q’s office, with the blessing of Q’s not-so-secret stash of alcohol and an extension pack of Cards Against Humanity.

If it were up to Bond, however, he thinks it would have gone even further back, back when M, his M, was still well and alive, Tanner a smidgen of a loyal bureaucratic shadow behind her short figure. There had been nothing noteworthy about the man then, other than the fact that he never fails to be present wherever M is.

He’s seen the taut lines in Tanner’s neck, the stiffness in his back at M’s funeral.

He wonders if Tanner sees the same things that Bond’s seen in him.

“Drunk _and_ drugged,” Q says, with something akin to wonder in his voice. Beside him, Eve throws down a white card with a derisive snort. “Whatever shall we do with him?”

Bond musters enough energy to give them a bleary glare, cards loosely fanned in his left hand. Not that he is up to playing, what with the words swimming into an incoherent mess before his eyes. He vaguely registers Eve saying something quietly, and growls in response, because nothing that Eve comes up with while he was in this state would be anything trustworthy. The woman had no honour when it came to party games and alcohol.

“Cunning, very cunning,” Q says, with sudden clarity. Bond drops his cards and scrubs at his face, before remembering that his hands were bandaged and was all in all, not a good idea. “Never knew that you had it in you.”

“I did major in chemistry for fun,” Tanner says as Eve hums appreciatively. Bond squints upwards when someone nudges at him. “Up, we’re getting you home.”

There was nothing unprofessional about the way that Tanner drove him home, bearing his weight for him when he swayed on his feet and helping him into bed. It was nothing that him and Eve wouldn’t do for Q, when the kid’s gone smashed on regret and alcohol and blame on a mission gone wrong or a freak accident that he feels he has responsibility over.

(He thinks the kid is holding onto too much responsibility for his age - nothing about the jibes regarding his age or anything about incompetency, but he worries that it would do the kind young man in if he weren’t careful some day.)

What isn’t professional, however, is when he wakes to a lingering headache and a bad taste in his mouth, struggling with himself regarding the merits of getting up and getting clean versus staying in bed and feeling like shit for the rest of the day, and then he finds Tanner, who has situated himself at his dining table with a copy of the morning paper and munching on toast. A breakfast for two is already laid out on the table at his elbow, and when Bond does nothing but stare, Tanner blinks at him over the headlines of the latest suspected serial killings in Manchester.

“You look like shit, James,” he says, with far too much cheer for a man who consumed as much alcohol as Bond knew he did last night.

He stays through breakfast and does the washing up, sleeves rolled up to his elbows as he scrubs at soapy pans and plates. Bond only sits at the table nursing his morning coffee, feeling as though something unexpected has just invaded his house. Like a giraffe, probably, except it wasn’t.

“See you Monday,” Tanner tells him when the dishes are clean and dry, retrieving his jacket from where he’s hung it over the back of a chair. “Don’t forget your medicine.”

In the beginning, there was never a line between being professional and unprofessional, other than an unspoken agreement between the both of them that maybe, this was okay.

\---

“You’re not drunk,” Tanner states.

Bond doesn’t lift his head from where he is currently using Tanner’s thigh as a comfortable pillow. “I’m beginning to think that I have to be drunk in order for you to pay attention to me,” he says, and he does not need to feign that hurt that bleeds into his voice.

Tanner sits rigidly, the both of them tangled on Bond’s bed in the sweltering bedroom. He doesn’t move when Bond attempts to nuzzle apologetically into the soft middle he feels against his cheek, so he stops, and tries not to miss the gentle hand that Tanner would usually card against his hair.

“Bond,” Tanner says, and Bond thinks, this is what M has left him, has left them - her voice in Tanner’s own. He can hear her disapproval in Tanner’s voice, and so drops the deception.

It is in their unspoken agreement not to interfere with each other’s personal life outside of what they share, and so Bond didn’t say a thing when he sees Tanner with a woman he’s never seen before.

It didn’t mean that he wouldn’t work outside of those lines, that was all.

“Whatever have I done that makes you think that of me?” Disappointment was loud in Tanner’s soft tones. He can still smell her perfume on him, but oddly, he cannot find it in himself to be sour the way he was before.

“Bond,” Tanner says, because he is still waiting for an answer that Bond does not have to give.

“Aren’t you going back to her?” Bond says instead, startling Tanner. “Melanie. She seems nice.”

Tanner rubs his fingers against each other, his own version of gaping at people when he is genuinely confused and it is impolite to do so. Bond’s picked up his tells and the nuances of his language over the years when he (they) were by her side. “Is this a vy for my attention?”

Bond’s clothes reek of the alcohol he’s dumped over himself, and he thinks the state of his house probably says something about him, even if he’s kept it clean and neat and tidy. He shrugs, inviting Tanner to draw his own conclusions.

“She was right,” Tanner says, suddenly. He doesn’t look at Bond when he stands up. There was no need to say who ‘she’ was - there was only the one who mattered to Bond, after all, and Tanner knows that. “Will you be alright by yourself?”

Bond gestures to himself, lips twisted in a self-deprecating smile. “Like you said. Not drunk.”

Tanner scrutinizes him, lips pressed into a tight line, before the fight seems to leave him, a small figure before Bond’s bedroom door. “Like I said,” he smiles, a tiny sad thing, before he lets himself out of Bond’s house.

\---

Because even Bond knows better than to risk Tanner’s ire, he turns to the second best candidate.

“You need a hobby,” Q says, frowning into his mug of tea, not looking away from the multiple screens he has before him.

Beside him, Bond slouches into the office chair, and grunts.

“A hobby that isn’t harassing Tanner,” Q adds for clarification. “The poor man has enough on his plate without you adding to it.”

“I’m not harassing him.”

Q makes a disbelieving sound in his throat, and it is enough for Bond to collect his packet of fish crackers and make to leave Q’s office.

“You’re not getting out of lunch with me,” Q reminds him when he is halfway to the door. Bond calls bullshit in his mind, but he quickly revises his opinion of Q when the man manages to track him all the way down to the tea boutique halfway across London when lunch rolls around.

Q plops himself into the seat opposite Bond’s, floppy hair and all, and sighs at the menu.

“I suppose I shouldn’t have picked a tea boutique,” Bond says, because he can’t simply tell Q w _ell done, you’ve found me and now I have to treat you to lunch_. “Seeing as you’re the tea lord and all.”

“Tea lord.” Q snorts, flipping through the menu quickly. “Is it bad manners to order the cheapest thing off this menu?”

“Probably,” Bond agrees. “But then lunch is on me, even if you do have a sizeable income that eating expensive shouldn’t have been a problem to you.”

“I have an expensive hobby,” Q shrugs. “And please, don’t ever call me tea lord again.”

“So you do prefer overlord.”

“I do, but that is beside the point. I’m not obsessed over tea the way you people think I seem to be.” Bond signals for a waiter, and allows Q to place his order, himself staring idly out the windows at the passing crowd. When the waiter is gone, Q eyes the coffee before Bond, and looks wistful. “I miss coffee.”

“Blasphemy.” Bond recoils. “You?”

“Gives me a migraine. Not something I enjoy in my daily life. Tea is the next best alternative to caffeine.” Q grimaces, then folds his hands before him on the tablecloth, serious now. “Why don’t you tell him? No, stop looking away, you dolt.”

Bond stares reluctantly at Q’s determined face, fierce behind those ridiculously expensive and oversized glasses of his.

“I don’t know,” he says, honest. “We’re colleagues.”

“See, that’s what Eve thought you would say.” Q hums, crossing his legs at the ankle beneath the table and bumping into Bond’s foot. “What if I were the one to bring you home?”

“Try not to cry when I wake up in the morning and you’ve set my house on fire?”

“As if.” Q thanks the waitress when she sets down his tea and a small pitcher of cream. “I promised Eve I would rip you a new one, but you’re being really pathetic right now and I don’t have it in me to kick downed puppies.”

“Nothing to do with this puppy buying you lunch?”

“Nothing.” Q is firm on it. “The problem is, you’re so selfish.”

Bond watches Q dig hungrily into his food, and thinks of all the time he’s taken Tanner away from something unimportant to him but undoubtedly important to Tanner, and quirks a smile.

“It’s not a secret.”

\---

Q doesn’t give him anything, and while he would love to, he doesn’t press.

He spends his time in Zanzibar with a beautiful woman, but she doesn’t make him feel the same way he does with Tanner. Q is silent on the line when she moans, but he always is.

He returns to London a little beaten and ragged around the edges, mission objective in hand and missing a couple of Q’s gadgets. M and Q take their turns chewing his ear off for their own respective reasons, and then he is back in his flat, dropping his keys into the dish by the door. He takes his time rinsing the dust off of him, and sleeps off his exhaustion before he tries to do some interior decoration rearrangement with the souvenirs he’s brought back.

London’s boring, and he thought he was being mature enough to be long past this stage of his life.

\---

“ _Bond thinks you’re dating.”_

__

_“That’s… interesting?”_

__

_“No, let me rephrase - he thinks_ he’s _dating.”_

__

_“Is he?”_

__

_“You tell me.”_

__

_“...what? But we’re not… what?”_

__

_“_ You _tell him.”_

__

\---

Because Bond is Bond, he resets the board that says _Days since Bond has not put his foot into his mouth_ to zero on a Wednesday.

“Why do you do this?” Bond asks, when they are both lying sticky and sore and out of breath in his bed. Bill looks surprised. He also looks resigned.

“Would you rather I not?” he asks, turning onto his side, hand coming up to gently brush against the bandage covering Bond’s side, and then sliding over to rest on undamaged skin.

Bond pushes closer, like an affectionate cat seeking the approval of its owner. The bedsheets are spotted with blood from where he’s bled through his bandages. He’s sore, low in his back, and remembers the way Bill had ghosted his hands over Bond’s wounds, eyes wide and nervous. He knows how bad he looks - he’s seen himself in the mirror in medical before booking himself out without informing anyone.

“I don’t think,” Bill licks his lips, and drops his hands back into his lap.

He had thrown the thin aluminium packet at him then, and had rolled over.

“Do it,” he said.

Bill had been exceedingly careful with him, even when he’d been chomping at the bit and cursing at him, hands gentle where his kisses were not. Still, it had been more pain than pleasure. He couldn’t speak for Bill, but he remembers his concerned face hovering over him for most of the time.

Bill ruffles Bond’s hair with a warm hand, tugging gently on the short strands.

“Go to sleep, James,” he says.

His mobile lights up from where it is on a nightstand in a hotel in Manila.

_Bond, you’re too old to be sulking._

__

\---

“Make me breakfast again.”

Tanner - still Bill, scowls at him from where he’s pulling on his socks. “Is that any way to treat your guest? I’m usually told that it is the other way around.”

Bond slouches in, yesterday’s shirt hanging off his shoulders, scratching a particularly itchy spot beneath his ribs. “Please?” he says, hopeful.

Bill glares at him, but he is pulling out all the pans in Bond’s kitchen a minute later.

“I have the chief of staff cooking breakfast for me,” Bond says, wondrously.

“Stuff it and sit down, agent.”

\---

Q sends him the video when he is in the butt end of Germany. He takes a sip of his latte as the video loads, and clicks play. The camera is shaky, and has to focus a few times before the young man on the small stage sharpens out to be Q. He looks different, Bond decides in good humour, when his ugly fashion fits him right into the young crowd all jammed into what looks to be a small bar. On camera, Q perches on the edge of a tall seat, and clears his throat, adjusting the mic.

_Come home_ , Q begins, and Bond drowns in the words he says next, because he has spotted Tanner, crowded up against the front of the crowd, hand obscuring his mouth and most of his face. His face, whatever can be seen of it, is a ruddy colour even in the dim lighting.

\---

_Will I see you in heathrow?_

__

_Don’t be daft._

_**  
**Of course you will._


End file.
